|
Predators of the night, ghastly poetry of cosmetics. The Champs-Élysées lit up at Christmastime, a splash of acid, a marred visage in the landscape of mannequins. The victim's brother (Helmut Berger) is a plastic surgeon determined to restore her face, his assistant (Brigitte Lahaie) helps him scoop up lookers and lock them in the dungeon under the clinic. The latest kidnapped fashion plate (Caroline Munro) is the daughter of a New York honcho (Telly Savalas), the prestigious butcher is a Nazi doctor (Anton Diffring) happy to be able to experiment again. "It's an honor for her to serve science." Cinéma du look according to Jesús Franco, a nice dash of grisliness under the slick sheen to distill the Euro-trash Eighties. (Recreations and facsimiles figure in the construction and decay of beauty, thus Robert Mitchum's son aping dad's noir nonchalance and impressing no one at the Paris police station: "You might think yourself a Bogey but you don't even have a trenchcoat or a hat.") A hypodermic in the eyeball of the wheelchair matron (Stéphane Audran), a corkscrew drill for the snooping nurse, pièce de résistance, the splatter-marinated animatronic head separated from its body via chainsaw and promptly smooched by the ogreish orderly (Gérard Zalcberg). Les Yeux sans Visage, naturally, but also Peerce's Ash Wednesday, with Berger. The Moulin Rouge is now a neon discotheque, arms-dealing France runs behind Russia and the United States, the "industry of death" irony savored by the elegant old war criminal. Howard Vernon's cameo brings The Awful Dr. Orlof up to date, then the camera lingers touchingly on the artificially aged Lina Romay. "Deep down, I'm a real sentimentalist." A pleasing synchronicity with Polanski's Frantic is to be observed. With Christiane Jean, Amelie Chevalier, Florence Guérin, Marcel Philippot, Henri Poirier, and Tilda Thamar.
--- Fernando F. Croce |